Zooming in Base Forms Isn't 100% Fantastic

[PhLo]

I’m sure others have noticed this. Probably more of a bug report situation, but I wondered if someone had discovered some kind of fix (other than grouping?).

My Base forms are generally designed as compact as is reasonable so they fit all on one page on a reasonable screen resolution. However, some people with poor vision (my parents for example) might wish to zoom at times. I thought it was cool that Base has a zoom feature, but it clearly has issues.

In addition to the flaws mentioned in this post, here are some more:

1) When zoomed/scaled in far enough where form fields expand beyond the right edge of the window, one would expect a horizontal scrollbar to appear so the user can scroll over to see the obscured items. Only a vertical scrollbar is available. Seems strange since this doesn’t happen in Writer proper, only when used as a Base Form environment.

If this absent scrollbar doesn’t happen for everyone, it does happen for me in Windows 10 x64, LO 6.0.7.3 (x64)

2) In the same situation as above, when fields extend beyond the right side of the window, they start creeping in toward the left - sometimes, but not always. Every item in my document is anchored to Page. Even if they were anchored to paragraph or as character, this shifting shouldn’t happen. It’s as if the controls are anchored to an imaginary “viewport” that is the size of the window instead of anchored to the actual page that can extend beyond what is visible. This bug doesn’t happen in Writer proper, only in Base. See image below.

I think this second bug can be circumvented if I group all my controls together into one big block, though I haven’t tested this in every situation.

This is what that same buggy view should look like in 100% zoom, and all controls are anchored to page. As I zoom in, the “Contact Info” table control and other controls to the right start shifting to the left over the other controls like the Address and City.

3) This is the smallest zoom related issue, but still an aesthetic bug. All the text and controls scale surprisingly nicely while zooming, maintaining sizes relative to each other. Except, take a look at that text on the bottom of the Table Control, within the Navigation bar. It’s HUGE!

Does anyone else see these bugs on other operating systems, or are they just a Windows thing? They make zooming impractical for the most part.

[PhLo]

At first I thought the solution to #2 was to make the page size really large, like 16 inches wide so the controls wouldn’t creep to the left when zooming. It worked initially (or so I thought), but then the controls moved around again. Not sure why.

[EasyTrieve]

@PhLo, you should know this by now I think, but just incase you’ve forgotten: this isn’t the place to submit bug reports. The people here don’t process them. Instead please select Menu | Send Feedback… and then search for and/or submit bug and/or feature requests there. Thanks

[PhLo]

Thanks for the reminder. This forum is my only exposure to LO culture/community. When I look at the bug reporting site, it’s kind of intimidating and technical, and not as “pretty”. Perhaps I’ll eventually get the guts to report some bugs there.

[EasyTrieve]

@PhLo, yes, take a deep breath, and try to report this there. I know it’s hard the first time but you’ll get through it.

[Hrbrgr]

Since your question is multi-part, I start with:

1. When zoomed/scaled in far enough where form fields expand beyond the right edge of the window, one would
   expect a horizontal scrollbar to appear so the user can scroll over to see the obscured items. Only a
   vertical scrollbar is available. Seems strange since this doesn’t happen in Writer proper, only when used as a
   Base Form environment.

This is not the case for me. Both scrollbars are available, horizontal and vertical:

With me: Windows 10, Version 1809, 64-Bit | LibreOffice, Version: 6.1.3.2 (x64)

EDIT_1 to 2)

I mainly create my forms with the form assistant. I checked it. All fields are anchored on the paragraph, I have not changed anything.

EDIT_2

One more note, the grouping of headline and field is canceled in all fields. No idea if that helps.

[PhLo]

Lucky. Pas pour moi. I just reinstalled LO recently too, the latest stable version. So not sure what it’s all about. It’s not the end of the world, but a bit annoying for sure. I’ll probably just end up grouping all the controls together, as I think it keeps them from moving about. The scrollbar deal is a bummer though. I’m not necessarily inclined to install the “fresh” version as I prefer stability and well-tested LO.

[PhLo]

P.S. I sometimes say random things in French because I took it a million years ago in high school. I realize your form has German in it, not French. I never studied German, though I have a lot of German blood in me.

[Hrbrgr]

Sorry for the German UI, but I think it went in the case only to the scrollbar. “stable” is an invention of the developers. In my opinion it does not say much. I always take the latest version, it usually hasn’t little more errors. To 2) see my edit answer.

[PhLo]

Hmmm… interesting. Anchored to paragraph, eh? I guess I can look into it. Most tutorials I have seen highly recommend anchoring everything to page, and I’ve seen kinda why. I’ve notice controls can jump around a bit if not anchored to the page. I really want my controls to stay put, exactly where I place them, no matter how they are viewed, scrolled or zoomed. We’ll see. I’m willing to try just about anything, even if I thought I tried it already.

[PhLo]

No need to apologize for German. If that’s your primary language, then good! The way I understand it, LO and much other open source software often gets developed largely in Europe anyway. Just because I’m American doesn’t mean I’m a Google and Microsoft fan (though they have their place too)! I’m a poor American, so I’m an open source and cheap alternative fan!

[Hrbrgr]

See my answer EDIT_2.

[PhLo]

By “headline” do you mean labels connected to fields/controls? I don’t use actual headings in my forms. Maybe I’ll try the LO fresh install one of these days to see if it fixes any bugs I’ve been dealing with.

[Hrbrgr]

Yes, i mean labels from fields. My english isn’t very good.